"#Meta acknowledged…to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms ["covid" and "long covid"] and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words…“coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/11/threads-covid-coronavirus-searches-blocked/
(#paywalled)
Back when I was still in university, sometimes my professors appeared in news articles. More often than not, they didn't appear, but the same 2-5 others experts of the country appeared (again and again and again).
As students we asked some professors how this all came to be. Who appeared where and how? We got the following explanation:
A news outlet decides they want to create an article or video. The tone and conclusion of the piece have already been decided. Then they contact many experts in that field. For example, a query they would send out is: "Hello, we're looking for experts to talk to about X."
Not many experts respond, but some do. The query they will get in response will be something like: "Thanks for your interest, we are looking for someone to confirm that X leads to Y and Z."
My professors told me that in their naive days, they would still keep interacting and correcting and suggesting other takes. "Actually, Y and Z aren't like that, it's too simplistic, but I could talk about A and B and how it leads to maybe Y in your article."
What would happen? They were ghosted of course. 😂
Among many experts, news outlets would eventually always find one or two people willing to confirm their shitty clickbait shit. And once these experts work along, they get contacted more frequently than others. Experts who keep correcting and being difficult, aren't contacted again.
I studied in a very niche field and I know all experts in that field in my country. I started to recognize who would work along and what they would gain from it. I now know who's blacklisted and who is being kept out of the news and why.
This has been in the back of my mind during the #pandemic. I assume things work the same way among virologists, epidemiologists, and other related experts. It's frustrating because they carry the title of expert, they come across as knowledgeable and the media spreads their words everywhere. It's made to appear as if these experts represent their whole field and all others in it.
But how many experts have these news outlets had to contact before finding someone who was willing to collaborate with their minimizing?
Hydroxychloroquine could have caused 17,000 deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, study finds.
Politico reports: "The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, 'despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits.'"
More than three years into the pandemic, the millions of people who have suffered from long COVID finally have scientific proof that their condition is real.
NBC News reports: "Scientists have found clear differences in the blood of people with long COVID — a key first step in the development of a test to diagnose the illness."
Hmm, new #COVID data point. My son, the paramedic, says he's seeing a TON of new cases (hasn't been seeing any for months). Told me to wear a mask if I go out to the store tonight. #VenturaCounty#pandemic
I'm re-reading Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. I'd forgotten there's a section on how, during such crises, people become prone to irrational beliefs and charlatans promoting, for want of a better expression, 'conspiracy theories' and anti-scientific ideas, and how these obsessional beliefs engender paranoia and the threat of group violence against 'non believers'. Maybe it's just something that (some) humans do in such times... #Pandemic#conspiracytheory
"Biden has steered the country out of a #recession and #pandemic, gotten through a slew of critical legislation (some bipartisan), avoided a default on the #debt, set the stage for about 14 million new #jobs and overseen a resurgence of manufacturing. Internationally, he has restored the #UnitedStates’ image and solidified and expanded #NATO in defense of #Ukraine.
Millions of Texans are suffering from long #COVID and you might be surprised to learn that many of them are young and formerly healthy. Studies show that the more often you get infected, the more likely you are to have lingering, potentially life-changing #health effects.
Look for it in print in @TexasObserver magazine now, and online later this month.
And many someones in overlapping layers of responsibility ENABLED this infection.
This linguistic shift from the passive to active voice might seem irrelevant but, instead of just echoing the framing we see in the headlines — that Neil Gaiman got COVID-19— it’s time to own that somebody has infected Neil.
The passive voice has served a macabre purpose in this pandemic. The passive voice, by erasing the subject of the sentence, neatly obscures accountability, and with it our own role in unmitigated infections. Moreover, it has prevented us from identifying the layers of responsibility in enabling infections on a mass scale. This mental block is the first obstacle to advocating for effective mitigations and constructive solutions. It stops us from preventing infections. But that is changing now.
It is time to own the damage that we are causing by infecting others with COVID-19. I believe that we all know, deep inside, that we are causing harm. And many of us are suffering from the cognitive dissonance of pretending that we aren’t. Because, in a pandemic, this is serious and large-scale harm.
This harm that, according to estimates, has killed over 25 million people and disabled at least 65 million and counting. The sooner we face the harm we are causing by infecting other people, the less damage we will cause to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our community, to strangers on the other side of the world. And to people who entertain and inspire us, like speculative fiction author and TV creator Neil Gaiman. And inspiration is necessary when we are facing so many challenges. It’s that simple.
We. Told. You. So.
"New research reveals many excess deaths during the #COVID19#pandemic were likely due to uncounted virus fatalities, challenging the accuracy of official death counts and underscoring the need for precise mortality data.
These two plots tell a sad story about where we are in #Eastern#Washington with the #Covid#pandemic. From what limited information is still available nowadays, it seems like the whole country is experiencing yet another wave of #SARSCov2 circulation, but my local region is all I really try to keep up with anymore.
I will try to explain in a 🧵 why this is all so crazy and awful. Read on if you care about your ability to engage in mental, physical, and even sexual activity.
"'We need to take this very seriously as a society,' [Monika Mitra, who directs the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at Brandeis University] said. 'We need to understand who these people are, how they’re being impacted and what we can do about it.'"
Doing everything you can to avoid spreading the virus is a great start
When people talk about "back during the pandemic," they clearly aren't paying attention to facts like London's Gatwick Airport canceling flights this week because 30% of their air traffic controllers were out sick with Covid.
[...] Documents show that the World Health Organization knew from the start that SARS-Cov-2 was airborne. They knew that '[a]irflow and ventilation were identified as important factors influencing efficient spread in hospitals,' but did not provide ventilation guidance to the public for years."
The effects of long COVID might rival heart disease and cancer, research indicates.
Popular Science reports: "Three years into the global COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated four million Americans report that long COVID is severely impacting their daily lives."
“We can’t talk about how we got to total state abandonment on #COVID without discussing the billions of dollars that went into disinformation campaigns, pushing people to think of public health as an individual responsibility.”
Losing my mind that this is in a 2013 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene:
"The growing threat of an influenza pandemic presents a unique challenge to healthcare workers, emergency responders, and the civilian population. [OSHA] recommends [NIOSH]-approved respirators to provide protection against infectious airborne viruses in various workplace settings."
This has been a challenging start to the year. I have finally fully left the little remote/home based work I did because of my Long-Covid and ill health after wrongly 'pushing through' in a state of constant PEM - just varying in intensity - relying on adrenaline surges, my partner caring for me, being pretty much housebound and making myself worse and worse. I regret not stopping sooner. I regret how much extra damage I have done. Though, I understand there was a interplay of structural and agency shaping my choices. I also know I am lucky to have had the choice to 'push through' and how many would not have been able to choose that even if they had wanted to. I have now got a lot of social security applications and appointments which, coming as no surprise, is fucking tough and challenging. The questions you have to answer, the awareness of all the ways the state tries to screw you. I am lucky to have a super supportive partner helping me with this, someone from a local charity helping and can't talk highly enough about the Benefits and Work guides!!!
Solidarity with everyone who still wears a mask. Solidarity with everyone who has had friends and family turn their backs on them for being covid cautious. Solidarity with everyone who has Long-Covid and does all they can to make sure no-one else has to live through the daily difficulties we do. Solidarity to everyone fighting against ableism, eugenics, Social Darwinism and health supremacy. Solidarity to everyone who gets shouted at and abused for wearing a mask. Solidarity to everyone who keeps going despite the overwhelming hegemonic narrative that what we are living through is 'normal'. Solidarity to everyone sharing science and facts about how covid spreads and the dangers of covid. Solidarity with you.
A new device can detect the coronavirus in the air in minutes (www.sciencenews.org)
The detector can sense as a few as seven to 35 coronavirus particles per liter of air — about as sensitive as a PCR test but much quicker.